Saturday, June 28, 2014

Very short post this week... Diva challenge was to revisit an old favorite in a new way. Time has been very short this week but the opportunity to revisit a favorite was too much! I love Betweed, it is one of my all time favorites. I did have a hard time deciding what to change or do differently... So this is what is different... I used a round string - I have never used a round tile because I draw in a book and I don't usually use the round shape by itself and I have never used this tangle in a circle before AND I used a very soft pencil (4B) and a paper blender to do the shading which is different for me AND I rounded the corners which is what is called for in the 'directions' but I never do it because I usually like the sharp crisp points. I also threw some Black Pearls in there, more or less how I usually do them. I like it, but it is maybe not as different and exploratory as I could have gotten.

I did play around ealrier in the week doing some trials of Betweed and Mooka (another favorite) and a pattern I am breaking down from a beaded trim I saw a few months ago. This ribbon-ized version of Betweed has some interesting potential but I was not really satisfied and had limited time to explore further. I think I will laminate the Mooka corner and use it as a book mark or on a card and I need to figure out if that bead pattern is similar to anything else I have seen out there... I like it's potential. Cheers! I have to go finish a take-home midterm exam before heading out to help commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain by helping to place a luminaria bag for each of the 3400 soldiers on both sides who died this month 150 years ago in the campaign for Atlanta back in 1864!

Friday, June 20, 2014

Love the two tangles in this week's Diva challenge so I had to play with them some. Of course I could not find my drawing stuff for about 4 days (turns out it was in a car that I wasn't driving this week) and I am heavily into the second week of trying to cover a semester's worth of General Chemistry in 5 weeks so I am a little busy relearning electron structure and molecular notation and bonding and... ugh. I am glad I have seen all this material before, albeit 20+ years ago or I think I might be totally overwhelmed!
However... I did play a little in the car notebook while I waited at baseball practice on Monday and I managed a few minutes here and there, including a couple of hours while at the pool after all day in class last night. Despite the wet spots on the paper from kids jumping in the pool a little more enthusiastically that I thought, I think it came out well...

This one is the result of playing on the only paper I had in the car at baseball practice on Monday. There is a little girl there also waiting on a player in practice that will come and watch over my shoulder as I draw for a long time. She won't try it herself... I have offered, but she will stand there and watch. My own children don't even bat an eye anymore!

This last one is from last week. I was playing with trying to develop a pattern from the photo of the feather texture in stone from my last post. Then I got busy with school work and pretty much stopped doing anything but that. Speaking of which... there are many on-line modules of electron configuration and bonding that I have to finish by Sunday, so I think I will sign off. Have a great week!

Saturday, June 7, 2014

I had quite a time with the UMT challenge tangle for this month, Bugles by Joyce Evans. I still don't have it quite right... as Linda Farmer cautioned in her post about it, it can be hard to get the horizontal spacing to play nicely with the vertical spacing. I also have the overwhelming urge to make the cones either carrots or dragonflies! However, with this version the cones really pop out from the surface and the rest makes an interesting background.

I also took her initial jelly bean shapes and instead began with upward arcs, drew the point of the cone above and then completed the "circle" behind the cone so it looks more like they would nest together. The pattern to the right is, I guess, a tangleation of Tipple that I saw in a light fixture at the bank. I am still playing with it a little and this version is a little rough, but the gradually smaller circles should all meet at a single point that varies randomly over the collection. It looks a lot like quilling patterns and it makes a great light fixture!

While on the topic of patterns, while I was visiting my mother I took the kids to one of our favorite places. They like to climb and slide and explore and I like to do all that and LOOK while I am at it...it is RICH with visual stimulation and the home of some of the most creative people I know of. They use all sorts of scrap items to make the various parts of the landscape, as you can see from this small sampling of the patterns I recorded while I was there...

a column covered in old gears and marbels

a wall made of steam tray inserts

One of the indoor climbing paths built around an old tree trunk

an outdoor bridge and climbing structure made of recycled parts

old printing plates decorate the mezanine walls

a fence made of metal left over from cutting out parts

texture on a stone carving salvaged from a torn down building

another fence made from old metal parts

one of the outdoor climbing pathways

another shot of an outdoor pathway, this one suspended by cables

even the serpents that guard the perimeter of the parking lot are a treat

This place, called City Museum, is such a treat and they have found so many wonderful and creative ways to use, as they say, "repurposed archetectural and industrial items". They are always growing and making new pathways and places to explore. The floor is a real visual treat as well... a giant mosiac of broken tile that took years to complete. I used to like to go just to see what they had added to the floor while I was away. Most of it on the first floor is sea and ocean themed with some patterns worked in around the edges. They have a museum of archetectural parts from old buildings (those that aren't worked into the rest of the place) and a circus and an art area with all sorts of projects you can do. It is a paradise for kids, but really speaks to the artist in people as well. If you ever have the chance and are in St. Louis, do go and visit!

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

I got so excited last week to be using my dad's drafting templates for the Diva's circle challenge that I used the oval template to make a string for another one...

Not all the sections of this one worked out as well as I had hoped, but overall I like the effect. I will have to use these templates more. I started another with a large circle when I got Linda Farmer's email with the link to the instructions for the new tangle Tropicana which I love. I had a few ideas for finishing this one off, but in the end just left the areas blank because I liked them that way too.

Then the Adele Bruno's String Thing Challenge (#43) was published on Tuesday and the string was very much like the circle string I had just done only with a squarish focus! This string worked so nicely with the tangles she suggested. This is a bold and graphic piece and I like it and I will use the string again. I worked Hollibaugh into the string itself and Huggins and Hypnotic and a little suggestion of Hibred. I did learn the value of just the right pencil... I was not wild about the waxy one I ended up with but I didn't have any of my "real" drawing pencils. I need to dig out a conte and see if I can smooth some of the shading out as it really shows up rough in the scan.

I have less than a week before classes begin and I am trying to squeeze as much 'relaxing' as I can before then. I hope to get a new pen or two and do more tangling this week. Maybe I will be posting again! Until then I will leave you with one I ran across by accident, a monotangle with Ansu, a scribble I did on a plain piece of typing paper one night and shoved in a book at the side of my bed...

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About Me

I am a person of varied but passionate interests. I have always loved both science and art and persue both because I am compelled to. I am currently in my first year of teaching high school science, specifically physics. I still draw or sew when I can, but it is rare that I have the time between grading and planning and taking care of my family of 5.